This is, of course, complex.

The city isn’t quite set up for this type of working relationship. Much is yet to be done to work out the kinks of that system.

The city isn’t really in the position to pay the appropriate market rate for the volume and caliber of work that needs to be done.

The sexy-shiny-social-public-facing apps are great, but it’s often the onerous, less-glam projects that really need doing.

The city isn’t set up to pay someone a portion of their fee and allow them then to own the code/product they create (so that they can sell it to others).

And, perhaps most importantly, the city lacks the talent to fill the jobs need in the whole city. (Don’t scream, you geeks. He wasn’t saying that there isn’t tons of talent and a great tech community; rather, that the volume of work to be done and the people able to do it just doesn’t exist at this time.)

There’s the Apps for Democracy, Code for America and a slew of other choices, but those projects and programs tend to be about sexy subjects/apps and such.

One of the speakers showed a website he’d developed on vacant properties in Baltimore. It was quite cool. And the data, well, it was quite fascinating.

I heard talk of Mayor SRB and her plan to bring — what is it? — 10,000 families to Baltimore in x years? And then I had a funny thought: funny, in that I laughed to see pieces of a puzzle come together.

“Occupy Baltimore!” was what I heard.

Yes, Occupy Baltimore.

Here’s a vision to try on in your head. I kind of like the way it is in mine.

Imagine the city were able to create a good system wherein it had a robust this-is-what-we-need procedure for short-term, specific tech projects. Imagine if decided to pay but a pittance for (probably, though not exclusively) young developers to work on these projects for below market rate. Imagine that the city would own the code, as their structured mindset so requires them to do so now if they pay for development.

Imagine that rather than being paid fully in cash for wages, or in code developed that they could resell, instead these coders were paid in Occupy Baltimore “currency:” in cash specifically and only toward vacant Baltimore housing. I’ll make up some numbers, but let’s say a project was worth $10,000 in a legitimate market, but the city only had $2,500 to pay for it. The person who took that job could get $2500 in cash and, say, for example’s sake, $15,000 in Occupy Baltimore currency. Maybe they took on another project, or worked with a friend or two to pool their Occupy Baltimore bucks. Who knows? Before a year could be out, a few friends could pool together to rebuild a vacant home.

Now, it might behoove the city to put these (mostly) young coders in group housing during there earn-less-than-market-rate days, assuming they were to work a minimum number of hours a week or month. It would need to be good housing. Dormitory grown up housing. Preferably near a fun area of Baltimore so they’d feel more connected to the city. These are Millennials of which we speak, and their long-cycle cultural legacy is affluence, technology and culture. They want all that and more, and adults do well to give it to them in childhood. Now that they are in young adulthood, we need to think differently about how to make as much as possible free for them. Not free as in hand-out free, but as in trade-energy-and-vitality-for-free. That kind of free.

I’m sure there are a 1,001 problems with this vision. And a 1,001 reasons why it’s perfect and right.

It’s one thing for a politician to say, “I’m gonna” (ref the State of the Union tonight and any other candidate on the campaign trail). It’s another thing to think differently and find solutions that are right for the times.

And the banks. Remember the banks, Wall Street, investment firms? Well, here’s a chance for the banks to redeem themselves; I’m sure they can work out some financing with the vacant properties, the city’s Occupy Baltimore bucks and some lovely form of a new housing program for young Millennials moving into city’s to re-energize them and bring brightness. Imagine the possibilities for bank’s (local ones especially) to transform themselves before the new generation of customers by doing right … for THEIR generation. To give them hope and possibility.

With Baltimore’s CIO, Rico Singleton, thinking in the direction he is thinking to get more coders who will do big work for little money, with Mayor SRB thinking in the 10K More Families direction she is thinking, with the insane vacancies in Baltimore (what, isn’t Baltimore the only major city in the last couple of decades to have actually lost population?), with shamed financial institutions needing a really good (and legitimate) win, with the massive and can’t-be-fought cycles of generational shifts and the opportunities for working with young Millennials at hand, my sense is Baltimore may just be the city perfectly positioned to make the OCCUPY movement actually mean something.

Occupy Baltimore!

Young geeks, if not you, then who. If not know, then when.

***

No, I didn’t edit or proofread this post. It is what it is.

I didn’t count on it changing me, this flood. But I find in the flood of “here comes everyone,” that it’s a little less fun to write. I still do it for me, for my clarity of thought. But the compulsion isn’t there as it was before when to blog felt more daring, more the world of a pioneer, or, perhaps better said: an early settler.

Wordpress Stats for Banana mango smoothie post

I do find it fascinating that my banana mango smoothie blog post still pulls in major hits, day in and day out. Blogging about smoothies — while utterly fun for me — was one of the ways where I saw the utter power of well placed key words and what was possible in a blog. But it seems Google has realized what I have known for awhile, my blog sizzle is not as hot as it once was and my banana mango smoothie post hits dropped from over 5,000 in Oct to less than 500 in December. They’re on to me, this slacker who once held the blog banner high.

I’m still here. More entrenched. More institutional. Less at the bleeding edge and more at the interior and mainstream where there is not blood, but decay; decay that cries out for that which is fresh and new, revitalizing and possibility-making. Oddly, all the at-the-edge, at-the-extreme things I’ve learned are that which make me valuable and critical in the part I can play on the institutional interior now. Odd. True. Right. I turn 49 this year; the Crone’s year. The year of 7 x 7, but I guess that’s another post, were I to get to it.

Happy New Year, lovelies.

In my dream, there was a particular image that struck me, resonated. It was an apartment building: a particular type of apartment building. The apartment was a high-end, positioned in the best of the best spots in the city. Night time. Streets filled with happy people. A good feeling in the air.

This particular apartment building wasn’t just any building where any-ol’-anyone could rent. It was marked SATURN, and in this building lived only and exclusively employees of Saturn. The city was filled with such buildings: amenity-rich, decked-out and top-of-the-line places designed specifically for the employees of a particular company. In this future I saw, this type of apartment buildings had become “the thing.” They had become a part of the economy, the job market, a recruiting tool.

See, rather than providing salaries that put just cash (lovely as it is) into the pockets of employees, companies had crafted worlds in which their employees were treated as special, where they were protected and bathed in the focused affluence and comfort of their employers who held these employees as very dear.

Think about it from a generational lens: the generation of Millennial young adults was brought into the world during a surge of “Baby on Board” stickers announcing their parents’ precious cargo; they were lovingly watched over in monitored playgroups as toddlers; resources for education surged during their years in elementary, then middle and high school; playgrounds were made safer; programming for kids exploded as an industry and, in general, the world of adults turned attention, time, money and effort toward ensuring that this particular generation would not be like the one that preceded it.

Why would it be any different when they are the dominant generation in young adulthood? It won’t be. Their young adulthood years will be a continuation of the focus and care of adults and institutions, and that is how the cycle goes.

http://www.caseyresearch.com/pdfs/20090922_TheFourthTurningJMD.pdf

Perhaps you know it as Everyday I’m Shufflin. And now that I have discovered the video on YouTube, I’m addicted. Apparently, I’m not the only one. This video has 246,268,423 views as of today.  That’s near a quarter billion views. And counting.

My sense is this song is — and will continue to be for decades — to  Millennials what Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was to GenXers: an addictive, heck yeah song and video, of which we never tired. In this song I sense the unquestionable generational shift of Boomer media moguls and GenX performers to GenX moguls and Millennial performers.

There’s the family element so comfortable to Millennials: the two gents in the group LMFAO are related. There’s the playfulness of their outfits and lyrics that lacks the angst and anger of GenXers; these two gents were rather privileged children, as most Millennials, regardless of income are, by virtue of growing up in an era where adults make children’s needs a priori. (Actually, one of the guys is a late-wave GenX, but you can see all the X and market-focused influence in their brilliantly branded line of clothing.)

It’s sexy, alive, fun and specific.

Of course, who am I to guess, predict or tell Millennials what they’ll find exquisitely memorable in their mid-life years, but if I were a betting woman, I’d put money on this song and video. If you’ve yet to see it, may I recommend you find 6:16 minutes to enjoy this video. And I do recommend watching it to the end!

It’s the stink bugs I’m talking about and their inevitable invasion come early fall. Last year it took me until well into fall, maybe even early winter, to change my tactics from an approach of bugs-belong-outdoors to you-will-die-if-you-step-inside-my-house. As a matter of fact, once I transitioned from Earth Momma Bugs-Belong-Outdoors to Stink Bug Killer on a Mission, I even began killing the stink bugs on the outside of my home. (I have a tall jar with cotton balls soaked in nail polish remover, and into the jar they go.)

This year, I started early. I started killing juveniles in the summer. And I’m starting to see them on the exterior and — gasp! — interior of my home. So, what’s a sane person to do?

Personally, I think if each man, woman and child (above the age of six) commits to killing 300 stinkbugs each this year then perhaps we can stem the geometric growth of their invasion. Who’s with me? You can count on me to do my part? Can I count on you to do yours?

The vertical filers, who assume their way is right because office products are made primarily to support their style, call us pilers, or stackers, or maybe even slobs. Well, they can call me and my kindwhat they want, but I am what I am, I know others who share similar thinking, and I’ve learned to work with my strengths and weaknesses. What I don’t have are products that work well for me.

I’m hoping someone will come across this blog, read the idea here and either point me to where I can buy the item I need, or perhaps they can figure out how to make it and get it to market. So here’s the quick flash idea I just had: The idea is to have a free-standing pole that has (in the right range of what is reachable while sitting or standing) trays accommodating 8.5 x 11+ paper horizontally and say 3/4″ high. The trays would, of course, be perpendicular to the pole and they would rotate around the pole, or at least partially. The intent would be that a tray could have a project label or file label on it that is visible from a sitting or standing position, but the tray could rotate out of the ordered stack so that the contents (the pile) could be accessed and then returned to the neat, tidy storage area.

Sigh. Not sure if that verbal description works. Basically the idea is to allow for piles, create a vertical stack and allow each pile to be pulled out and accessed as needed. It’d probably be useful to have different options for the actual tray height and then some adjustment option  for creating space between stacked trays.

The problem with all the horizontal filing systems currently  on the market is that they assume a person wants to file away a horizontal pile. But I know I just want to PUT a horizontal file somewhere until I need it again. The products for horizontal filing misunderstand the basic and initial need of Our Kind.

I need a product engineer! Herman Miller (and crew), can you hear me now?

My response through the lens of applied generational theory:

Millennials, those in the 7-ish to 29-y.o. range in 2011, are raised in a culture influenced mostly by Boomer values. Boomers orient as a generation toward vision, values and religion. It shouldn’t be too surprising then that if you’re raised by a generation that leans one way, that you lean the OTHER way. It’s not that Millennials are mostly agnostic; it’s that they’re less curious about their internal and spiritual worlds and more curious about the external and physical world. Boomers, who grow up in a structured and well-built world as children, in young adulthood created a cultural change to focus on the meaning and purpose (of everything!).

So as Millennials now define young adulthood, what do we see? Millennials grow up in a values-fixated world, and in young adulthood, bring a focus back to the physical world and the importance of structure.

GenXers, in between both, correct the excesses of a values-fixated world and lead the shift toward a world where systems function better, thus allowing the Millennials a platform upon which they can bring their “Hero Energy” into society and actually use it!
The Silent/Homelanders are another story for another day.

So I offer this to the Boomer who looks at Millennials and sees them, along with his generational cohorts, as more agnostic and atheist: generations always see other generations through their own filters. (Right? Makes sense.) Imagine what the Boomers’ values-fixation and generational unwillingness to define as important the care of the physical world, e.g. roads, bridges, public parks, IT systems, looks like to Millennials who are raring to go, raised for their role as Heroes and wanting very much to live in a world that is safe, gleaming and structured. Then let’s talk about which generation is more this and less that. Being more religious or more agnostic is not a good-er or badder (I might have just made up two more words) thing. It’s a cycle and a rhythm that happens naturally to correct excesses, provide what’s needed now and create the path for a future that’s coming. That’s what generations do; they balance each other, allowing for growth, renewal and evolution.